Global power brokers once dismissed Greenland as a white blot on the world map. No longer: Investors from Australia to Canada to China are flocking to the island in the next great contest for mineral riches. Large-scale mining, however, will not be without risks.

The Danish People’s Party, the long-successful anti-immigrant faction of Copenhagen politics, has served as inspiration to political factions across Europe for years. But as voters turn away, there is a chance that Europe may be changing, too.

Denmark has forged a social and economic model that couples the best of the free market with the best of the welfare state, transcending tradeoffs between dynamism and security, efficiency and equality. Other countries may not be able to simply copy the Danish model of social democracy, but it nonetheless offers important lessons for governments confronting the dilemmas of globalization.

It is a major aim of the Danish Government and the Danish people to do everything within their power to strengthen the United Nations. Small countries have a vital stake in supporting the development of the United Nations so that it becomes an effective instrument of the international rule of law. Obviously, this is not an aim that can be achieved at once. But by helping to preserve and strengthen the United Nations as an effective instrument for peace in the current international situation, we can help in the longer run to bring about conditions which foster gradual progress toward the distant but all-important goal.